V-Dem Institute Ranks Serbia 112th in World in State of Democracy

Belgrade, panorama (BETAPHOTO/MILOS MISKOV)

In 2025 Serbia was marked by the dissolving of democracy, a lack of free elections, government voter intimidation and the declining participation of civil society, an analysis performed by the Swedish Variety of Democracy (V-Dem) institute, shows.

This places Serbia for the ninth year in a row in the group of countries that the V-Dem Institute based at the University of Gothenburg describes as electoral autocracies - countries that have elections which are neither free nor fair.

Serbia ranked 112 out of 179 countries ranked according to its Liberal Democracy Index (LDI).

Serbia, along with Cambodia and the Ivory Coast, is one of three countries that have seen a drop in both indicators of free and fair elections, and a significant decline of the autonomy of its electoral bodies. Serbia is also one of 21 countries where voter intimidation at the hands of the government has increased.

"Serbia was an electoral democracy when the period of its autocratization began. Democracy transformed into electoral autocracy back in 2014 when its president (and before that prime minister) Aleksandar Vucic and his Serbian Progressive Party began increasingly undermining the quality of Serbian elections, which are no longer regarded as either free or fair," V-Dem says in the report.

In that context Serbia, alongside Hungary, is described as being the country whose LDI index has slid the most since the erosion of democracy began and it became an electoral autocracy.